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"Are Games Art?" and the Intellectual Value of Design (timconkling.com)
itwbennett writes: Tim Conkling is an independent game developer whose current project, Antihero, is a strategy game about running a thieves' guild in a Dickens-inspired Victorian city. Recently he had the opportunity to talk to (i.e., was held captive by) an elderly and 'accomplished playwright, set designer, and painter' who quickly dismissed game design as 'not art.' The question of games being art or not isn't a new one. Roger Ebert was on the 'games are not art' bandwagon in 2010. More important to Conkling, who wrote about this interaction in a recent blog post, is the notion that any 'intentionally designed' piece is worthy of intellectual respect. "Nobody would ever seriously write off, for example, an Eames chair or a Gehry building; whether these objects fit some random definition of 'art' is inconsequential to their perceived cultural value." writes Conkling.
"art" could mean just about anything in English, so yes video games can be art.
Other languages are different. For example in Korean, art means painting/drawing/sculpture. Music is not art, it's music. So for Koreans, video games are not art.
It's not a matter of opinion. The quality of any work of art is subjective, but its status as art is an objective, self-evident, irrefutable fact.
And it's not just the "best" games, or the ones that meet some arbitrary threshold of "artiness". Yes, Braid and Bioshock are art, but so are Duke Nukem Forever and Custer's Revenge.
Nor is it just video games. It's all games. Everything from tag to checkers to D&D to Monopoly is art, too.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
I find it hard to understand why "are games art?" strikes anyone as enough of a question to even be asked. Unless you hew to a far narrower definition of 'art' than even most critics and artists do; it seems pretty obvious that they have the potential to qualify.
This doesn't mean that most of them are anything but sophomoric schlock produced entirely for mercenary purposes; but the same is true of music, film, photography, etc. and nobody seriously advances the "Music can't be art; because boy bands and pop tarts!" position or argues that Uwe Boll refutes the artistic status of film.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
Sure. Just as there cannot be a door knob that is not art. Or a zipper pull tab that is not art. Or ballpoint pen that is not art. Or a chair. or a pizza box. or a monthly credit card statement, or screwdriver, or a coupon for cat food. All of these things required some creative choices ... colors, textures, fine details, and their placement, etc. It's all art.
So yes, if that's the threshold, then "all games are art". That's not a very interesting thing to say though.
So when people ask whether games are art, they ARE invariably referring to a more nebulous definition of an artistic pursuit wherein an artist is attempting to evoke a response from his audience. Are games THAT kind of art is what they are asking?
And yes, absolutely, some games, most definitely do rise to that level of art. You named a few yourself.
But a simplistic knockoff freemium game on the app store that is little more than a skinner box attached to a nag screen for your credit card number... it's art on the same level as the coupon book from mcdonalds I got mailed yesterday is art.
It has nothing to say. It's not trying to get you to think (and really it would just prefer it if you didn't think and just entered your credit card number for some more coins/gems/whatevers). And anything thinking you do end up doing is entirely incidental to it's raison d'etre; and probably a detriment to it fulfilling its purpose of distracting you into extracting a few more dollars from your wallet without your noticing.
And seriously, even Duke Nukem had things to say and even caused controversy and was an intentional parody of it's genre.
But a lot of the stuff i see on the app store. Yeah, some guy drew some cutesy icons and animations, and that's "art" but the game itself is no more interesting artistically than a dollar store toilet brush. That is to say: yes its art, but so what?
Ditto for tag. Tag isn't artistically interesting.